Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Wortley for the question. Funnily enough, it has an eerily familiar ring to a request I had from Telstra. That particular request has an eerily familiar ring to it, Senator Wortley. The request really relates to maps for the Australian Broadband Guarantee, not for OPEL coverage maps, which in fact have been publicly available. But it is interesting that Senator Wortley talks about maps. I wonder why we have not seen a map, a plan or any technical information—not one skerrick other than a flimsy press release—for 4½ months from the Labor Party.

The Labor Party cannot come in here and lecture the government about maps and plans when we have a fully costed, fully able to be rolled out, whole new wholesale broadband network for rural and regional Australia that not only will reach 99 per cent of the population but will look after the seven million households that Labor’s plan simply fails to address—simply because the Labor Party has not got its head around the mix of technologies that is necessary to deliver a range of solutions for a range of circumstances in rural and regional Australia. When Senator Wortley comes clean with some maps from the Labor Party, perhaps I will consider some further Australian Broadband Guarantee maps more broadly.